


The Return

by webcricket



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Hurt Castiel, Hurt/Comfort, Protective Castiel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-10
Updated: 2018-05-10
Packaged: 2019-05-05 01:36:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14606310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/webcricket/pseuds/webcricket
Summary: Castiel returns to the bunker withdrawn and injured after a hunt gone wrong with the Winchesters. The reader’s patience and care helps him find his way back.





	The Return

You don’t ask how the hunt went. You see the aftermath wrought on their strained and blood-stained faces as they clod wordlessly down the iron stairs, trudging single file, into the bunker proper. There are no buoyant greetings or triumphant smiles, only two worn husks of men and their dutiful angel – _your_ angel – trailing behind.

Dull, drained, and lacking their usual glint of humor, Dean’s greens focus inward. Although his shirt is torn from shoulder to abdomen, the edges of fabric gaping and caked with crimson, no visible wound mars the muscular landscape beneath. The flapping material remnant of the jagged slash testifies to a hunt gone sideways and yet another close call. _Too close_. Always too close. 

The elder Winchester beelines for the kitchen and a fridge he left stocked with cold beer and ignores your murmur informing him there’s cold pizza on the bottom shelf. You don’t press the matter. He’ll smell the spice of pepperoni and onion when he opens the door and his stomach reminds him he just drove 8 hours non-stop.

Sam acknowledges you with a tight smile and pauses long enough to engulf you in a one-armed hug. He doesn’t need both limbs to fold you into the towering column of his body and peck a fraternal kiss to the top of your head.

The sting of sulfur lingers in his clothes where your nose brushes soft flannel. _Demons_ – your throat closes and you gulp hard against a thickening terror of empathy for the hellish ambush they must have survived – there weren’t supposed to be demons.

Stealing a parting squeeze, sighing a silent prayer of gratitude into your hair that you weren’t there to witness the melee, or worse, Sam liberates you without a word and follows in his brother’s footsteps.

Castiel remains fixed at the base of the staircase and watches Sam disappear into the hallway. The silhouette of a frown dims the pink pout of his mouth. The boys tend to forget that although the angel respects their private thoughts, he can hear them with resounding clarity when they pray. The dismissive _thank Gods_ for this and that punctuate a multitude of moments in his mind. And although this prayer is one he shares, perceiving it hurts. Hearing it reminds him he may not have been able to protect you had you been there. He might have been required to make an impossible choice between you and the brothers.

The angel’s eyes sheen watery with an unshed flood of frustration. The fault and failure are not his alone, or even his at all. Bad things happen to good people. To good angels, too. As in this case, not every contingency is one for which they can be prepared. Regardless of this fact, he shoulders the full burden for the fiasco. The faceted blue glass of his irises refracts a roiling sea of regret in the golden light of the map room.

Frozen there, his vessel slumps under the reinforced heft of self-doubt carried back from this hunt. Blood and black gore spatter the beige of his trench. A nasty cut bloodies his brow. The socket of the eye beneath the gash is swollen to twice the size it should be and is beginning to deeply purple in a hue consistent with fracture. A cascade of dried and freshly oozing red meanders the square line of his jaw to blemish the crisp white of his shirt collar. All of the above serve as evidence his grace is too depleted from healing Dean from mortal injury to attend to his own needs or, and of equal likelihood, he holds no care for himself at present and feels the physical suffering is a deserved expression of his inner torment.

“Hey, angel. I missed you.” Features smilingly softened with the profound affection you feel, voice lined with rasping relief that he made it home, you stride forward and grasp at his arm.

He shrinks away and refuses to meet your gaze, instead casting his eyes downward in an act of contrition. He doubts, too, that he is worthy of your continued devotion.

Undeterred, you reach up to caress his cheek with your fingertips – the tender touch reassuring and warm as the tips skim and tickle the scruffy skin to compel the celestial being contained within, self-berating, balled up and bound beneath the barrier of this vessel, to look at you. To see the unyielding love gleaming in your gaze regardless of his disbelief in himself.

Still, he will not look at you. His lashes flutter shut, a sigh shaking loose from his lungs as he leans into the forgiving comfort of your palm.

“You want to talk about it?” Your thumb brushes his unbruised temple.

His hand lifts to clasp over yours, light blanketing grip growing firmer to hold you fast as he shakes his head in silent answer.

You don’t push him. You already know enough, and Sam and Dean will fill in the details in the morning. The particulars aren’t important. Caring for the angel who needs you now more than ever, keeping him from drowning, from sinking irretrievably into this stormy sea of doubt on which he sails adrift between Heaven and Earth, is the only thing that matters. Your free hand wriggles into and weaves through the fist of fingers swaying at his side. “Let’s get you cleaned up then, okay?”

He nods assent. Tightening his fist to fill the fleshless gaps between your fingers until his grounding grip verges vice-like in intensity, he shuffles numbly, always a step behind, eyes on the floor, as you lead him onward. When you stand before the threshold of your bedroom and urge him in ahead of you, his fingers reluctantly release from your handhold, unlacing one by one as he fights to find the strength to let go, not trusting that you won’t immediately evaporate, dissolving into an intangible figment of hope haunting his imagination.

Sensing his trepidation, you shift your touch to his shoulders and massage the solid breadth of muscle and bone there. Your thumbs knead circles into the knots radiating outward from his neck.

He breathes out a hoarse moan and moves forward at your subtle prodding.

His fear of abandonment assuaged, you curl your fingers around the collars of his coats to peel the soiled garments from his frame. With a weak shrug of assistance from him, the coats puddle to the floor. You stoop to scoop them up and toss them into your pile of laundry to clean later. Straightening up, you lay your palm to the rigid muscular dip at the center of his broad back. Inflection calming and quiet, you instruct, “Go and sit.” You give him a gentle shove in the direction of your bed.

The whole column of his body tenses, ribcage rising in rapid shallow panicked respiration at the threat of lost contact.

“I’m not going anywhere,” you reassure, nudging him again, “Just over to the sink to get a washcloth and the first aid kit.”

He pivots his head to concentrate on your departing bare feet. Muscle memory guides him the six short strides to the edge of the mattress where he collapses upon the comforter. His focus fastens upon the sinewy structure of your ankles – tendons and ligaments elongating and contracting up into the curve of strong calves in disjointed choreography to the gurgling rush of cold water splashing porcelain and the squish of a saturated cloth wrung out. He holds his breath, snubbing his vessel’s screams for oxygen, until the feet turn and tread heel to toe heel to toe heel to toe toward him. Only when the cool washcloth dabs the blood congealing around his eye and the compression of your palm balanced on his thigh for support as you lean over him registers, does he sharply exhale and slam shut his eyes. He reflexively clutches at your wrist, encircling his fingers around your unflinching flesh.

“Sorry, that must sting,” you apologize.

It doesn’t sting – it reminds him he is alive. And, palpating the measured pulse of your heart bounding at the base of your thumb, so are you. And right now this is the only thing in all of creation that doesn’t hurt. Stoical, lashes slippery with dampness, soldiering on, he subdues a sob. Still, he does not look at you.

Plopping the used cloth into the brimming pink-tinted basin of water on the nightstand, you gingerly apply antiseptic to the cleansed cut. You bring your bowed lips near to his brow, blowing to dry the area.

Inhaling the familiar sweet and exhilarating scent of you – sunshine after a summer storm – his nose flares in the humid flux of air washing over his face. It overpowers any residue of sulfur abrading his senses. He sighs when you cease your breathy ministrations to carefully tape the edges of the laceration together with an arcing succession of delicate butterfly bandages.

His blues blink open to peer down at your fingers deftly sliding loose his tie and unfastening the buttons of his shirt in descending order. Movements feeble, he assists you freeing first one, then the other arm as you remove the bloodied attire.

The pads of your fingers ghost the firm planes of his figure. “Oh, Cas,” you gasp, tears pricking your vision to see the blackening bruises battering his bare torso. You trace the purple imprint of a boot overlying the Enochian warding tattoo on his abdomen. Examining his averted eyes, you ask, “Does it hurt?”

On the seraph’s skewed sensory scale, it hurts less than the prospect of losing you. Less than discovering Dean writhing in agony, holding in his own guts, bleeding out on the floor of a dingy warehouse. Less than the unspoken desperation in Sam’s eyes imploring the angel to save his brother. Less than the realization that he didn’t have a smidgen more grace to spare after doing so. Less than the knowledge that he was enough, _barely_ , this time, but maybe not the next. He doesn’t bother to reply.

You help him swallow some Aspirin and ease him into the bed. Switching off the lamp, you snuggle in alongside him, draping a blanket over both of your bodies. In the swath of hall light stretching from the ajar door to illuminate and cast shadows on your faces, you discern his sorrowfully shaded blue eyes finally resolve their regard upon you. Threading your fingers through his hair, you repeat your earlier greeting in a whisper, “Hey, angel. I missed you.”

The deluge of tears dammed back until now begins to streak his cheeks and saturate the sheets; for in your features, he recognizes the acceptance and love he longs for and which endures undaunted within your heart despite his defeats. Despite his doubts.

You draw him nearer to nestle in the nook of your neck and to bury a dozen doting kisses into the chesnut-gilded crown of his locks.

He sniffles and winds his limbs around your body – disregarding the searing reminder of physical pain shocking his vessel – to banish any distance separating you. “I missed you, too,” he hums, lips grazing the ridge of your collarbone, traveling to the apex of your throat to settle over the steady throb of life thrumming just beneath.


End file.
